THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

CLASSIC
1 The Sociological
CONTEMPORARY Imagination
C. WRIGHT MILLS
CROSS-CULTURAL

To C. Wright Mills, the sociological imagination is a special way to engage the world. To
think sociologically is to realize that what we experience as personal problems are often
widely shared by others like ourselves. Thus, many personal problems are actually social
issues. For Mills, one of sociology’s most outspoken activists, the sociological imagina-
tion encouraged collective action to change the world in some way.

Nowadays men often feel that their private lives Underlying this sense of being trapped are
are a series of traps. They sense that within their seemingly impersonal changes in the very structure
everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their of continent-wide societies. The facts of contempo-
troubles, and in this feeling, they are often quite rary history are also facts about the success and the
correct: What ordinary men are directly aware of failure of individual men and women. When a soci-
and what they try to do are bounded by the pri- ety is industrialized, a peasant becomes a worker;
vate orbits in which they live; their visions and a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a business-
their powers are limited to the close-up scenes of man. When classes rise or fall, a man is employed
job, family, neighborhood; in other milieux, they or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes
move vicariously and remain spectators. And up or down, a man takes new heart or goes broke.
the more aware they be- When wars happen, an
come, however vaguely, insurance salesman be-
of ambitions and of comes a rocket launcher;
threats which transcend a store clerk, a radar man;
their immediate locales, a wife lives alone; a child
the more trapped they grows up without a fa-
seem to feel. ther. Neither the life of
an individual nor the his-
Source: From The Sociological tory of a society can be
Imagination by C. Wright Mills. understood without un-
Copyright © 2000 by Oxford derstanding both.
University Press, Inc. Used by
permission of Oxford Univer- Yet men do not usu-
Alex Colville (1920–), To Prince Edward Island, 1965, acrylic emulsion on masonite,
sity Press, Inc. 61.9 ! 92.5 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, © NGC/MBAC. ally define the troubles

1
2 The Sociological Imagination
they endure in terms of historical change and in-
stitutional contradiction. The well-being they
enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups
and downs of the societies in which they live.
Seldom aware of the intricate connection be-
tween the patterns of their own lives and the
course of world history, ordinary men do not usu-
ally know what this connection means for the
kinds of men they are becoming and for the kinds
of history-making in which they might take part.
They do not possess the quality of mind essential
to grasp the interplay of man and society, of biog-
raphy and history, of self and world. They cannot
cope with their personal troubles in such ways as
to control the structural transformations that usu-
ally lie behind them.
Surely it is no wonder. In what period have so
many men been so totally exposed at so fast a
pace to such earthquakes of change? That Amer-
icans have not known such catastrophic changes
as have the men and women of other societies is
due to historical facts that are now quickly be-
coming “merely history.” The history that now
affects every man is world history. Within this
scene and this period, in the course of a single
generation, one-sixth of mankind is transformed
from all that is feudal and backward into all
that is modern, advanced, and fearful. Political
colonies are freed; new and less visible forms of
imperialism installed. Revolutions occur; men
feel the intimate grip of new kinds of authority.
Totalitarian societies rise, and are smashed to
bits—or succeed fabulously. After two centuries
of ascendancy, capitalism is shown up as only
one way to make society into an industrial appa-
ratus. After two centuries of hope, even formal
democracy is restricted to a quite small portion
of mankind. Everywhere in the underdeveloped
world, ancient ways of life are broken up and
vague expectations become urgent demands.
Everywhere in the overdeveloped world, the
means of authority and of violence become total
in scope and bureaucratic in form. Humanity it-
self now lies before us, the super-nation at ei-
ther pole concentrating its most coordinated and
massive efforts upon the preparation of World
War III.
The very shaping of history now outpaces the
ability of men to orient themselves in accordance
with cherished values. And which values? Even
when they do not panic, men often sense that
older ways of feeling and thinking have collapsed
and that newer beginnings are ambiguous to the
point of moral stasis. Is it any wonder that ordi-
nary men feel they cannot cope with the larger
worlds with which they are so suddenly con-
fronted? That they cannot understand the mean-
ing of their epoch for their own lives? That—
in defense of selfhood—they become morally in-
sensible, trying to remain altogether private men?
Is it any wonder that they come to be possessed
by a sense of the trap?
It is not only information that they need—in
this Age of Fact, information often dominates
their attention and overwhelms their capacities to
assimilate it. It is not only the skills of reason that
they need—although their struggles to acquire
these often exhaust their limited moral energy.
What they need, and what they feel they need,
is a quality of mind that will help them to use in-
formation and to develop reason in order to
achieve lucid summations of what is going on in
the world and of what may be happening within
themselves. It is this quality, I am going to con-
tend, that journalists and scholars, artists and
publics, scientists and editors are coming to ex-
pect of what may be called the sociological
imagination.
The sociological imagination enables its pos-
sessor to understand the larger historical scene in
terms of its meaning for the inner life and the ex-
ternal career of a variety of individuals. It enables
him to take into account how individuals, in the
welter of their daily experience, often become
falsely conscious of their social positions. Within
that welter, the framework of modern society is
sought, and within that framework the psycholo-
gies of a variety of men and women are formu-
lated. By such means the personal uneasiness of
individuals is focused upon explicit troubles and

the indifference of publics is transformed into in-
volvement with public issues.
The first fruit of this imagination—and the
first lesson of the social science that embodies
it—is the idea that the individual can understand
his own experience and gauge his own fate only
by locating himself within his period, that he can
know his own chances in life by becoming aware
of those of all individuals in his circumstances.
In many ways it is a terrible lesson; in many ways
a magnificent one. We do not know the limits of
man’s capacities for supreme effort or willing
degradation, for agony or glee, for pleasurable
brutality or the sweetness of reason. But in our
time we have come to know that the limits of
“human nature” are frighteningly broad. We have
come to know that every individual lives, from
one generation to the next, in some society; that
he lives out a biography, and that he lives it out
within some historical sequence. By the fact of
his living he contributes, however minutely, to
the shaping of this society and to the course of its
history, even as he is made by society and by its
historical push and shove.
The sociological imagination enables us to
grasp history and biography and the relations be-
tween the two within society. That is its task and its
promise. To recognize this task and this promise is
the mark of the classic social analyst. It is charac-
teristic of Herbert Spencer—turgid, polysyllabic,
comprehensive; of E. A. Ross—graceful, muck-
raking, upright; of Auguste Comte and Emile
Durkheim; of the intricate and subtle Karl
Mannheim. It is the quality of all that is intel-
lectually excellent in Karl Marx; it is the clue to
Thorstein Veblen’s brilliant and ironic insight, to
Joseph Schumpeter’s many-sided constructions
of reality; it is the basis of the psychological
sweep of W. E. H. Lecky no less than of the pro-
fundity and clarity of Max Weber. And it is the
signal of what is best in contemporary studies of
man and society.
No social study that does not come back to the
problems of biography, of history, and of their
intersections within a society has completed its
Reading 1 The Sociological Imagination 3
intellectual journey. Whatever the specific prob-
lems of the classic social analysts, however limited
or however broad the features of social reality
they have examined, those who have been imagi-
natively aware of the promise of their work have
consistently asked three sorts of questions:
1. What is the structure of this particular society as a
whole? What are its essential components, and how
are they related to one another? How does it differ
from other varieties of social order? Within it, what
is the meaning of any particular feature for its con-
tinuance and for its change?
2. Where does this society stand in human history?
What are the mechanics by which it is changing?
What is its place within and its meaning for the de-
velopment of humanity as a whole? How does any
particular feature we are examining affect, and how
is it affected by, the historical period in which it
moves? And this period—what are its essential fea-
tures? How does it differ from other periods? What
are its characteristic ways of history-making?
3. What varieties of men and women now prevail in
this society and in this period? And what varieties
are coming to prevail? In what ways are they se-
lected and formed, liberated and repressed, made
sensitive and blunted? What kinds of “human na-
ture” are revealed in the conduct and character we
observe in this society in this period? And what is
the meaning for “human nature” of each and every
feature of the society we are examining?
Whether the point of interest is a great power
state or a minor literary mood, a family, a prison,
a creed—these are the kinds of questions the best
social analysts have asked. They are the intellec-
tual pivots of classic studies of man in society—
and they are the questions inevitably raised by
any mind possessing the sociological imagina-
tion. For that imagination is the capacity to shift
from one perspective to another—from the politi-
cal to the psychological; from examination of a
single family to comparative assessment of the
national budgets of the world; from the theologi-
cal school to the military establishment; from
considerations of an oil industry to studies of
contemporary poetry. It is the capacity to range
from the most impersonal and remote transforma-
tions to the most intimate features of the human
4 The Sociological Imagination
self—and to see the relations between the two.
Back of its use there is always the urge to know
the social and historical meaning of the individ-
ual in the society and in the period in which he
has his quality and his being.
That, in brief, is why it is by means of the soci-
ological imagination that men now hope to grasp
what is going on in the world, and to understand
what is happening in themselves as minute points
of the intersections of biography and history within
society. In large part, contemporary man’s self-
conscious view of himself as at least an outsider,
if not a permanent stranger, rests upon an ab-
sorbed realization of social relativity and of the
transformative power of history. The sociological
imagination is the most fruitful form of this self-
consciousness. By its use men whose mentalities
have swept only a series of limited orbits often
come to feel as if suddenly awakened in a house
with which they had only supposed themselves
to be familiar. Correctly or incorrectly, they
often come to feel that they can now provide
themselves with adequate summations, cohesive
assessments, comprehensive orientations. Older
decisions that once appeared sound now seem to
them products of a mind unaccountably dense.
Their capacity for astonishment is made lively
again. They acquire a new way of thinking, they
experience a transvaluation of values: In a word,
by their reflection and by their sensibility, they re-
alize the cultural meaning of the social sciences.
Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which
the sociological imagination works is between
“the personal troubles of milieu” and “the public
issues of social structure.” This distinction is an
essential tool of the sociological imagination and
a feature of all classic work in social science.
Troubles occur within the character of the in-
dividual and within the range of his immediate
relations with others; they have to do with his
self and with those limited areas of social life of
which he is directly and personally aware. Ac-
cordingly, the statement and the resolution of
troubles properly lie within the individual as a
biographical entity and within the scope of his
immediate milieu—the social setting that is di-
rectly open to his personal experience and to
some extent his willful activity. A trouble is a
private matter: Values cherished by an individual
are felt by him to be threatened.
Issues have to do with matters that transcend
these local environments of the individual and the
range of his inner life. They have to do with the
organization of many such milieux into the insti-
tutions of an historical society as a whole, with
the ways in which various milieux overlap and in-
terpenetrate to form the larger structure of social
and historical life. An issue is a public matter:
Some value cherished by publics is felt to be
threatened. Often there is a debate about what that
value really is and about what it is that really
threatens it. This debate is often without focus if
only because it is the very nature of an issue, un-
like even widespread trouble, that it cannot very
well be defined in terms of the immediate and ev-
eryday environments of ordinary men. An issue,
in fact, often involves a crisis in institutional ar-
rangements, and often too it involves what Marx-
ists call “contradictions” or “antagonisms.”
In these terms, consider unemployment. When,
in a city of 100,000, only one man is unemployed,
that is his personal trouble, and for its relief we
properly look to the character of the man, his
skills, and his immediate opportunities. But when
in a nation of 50 million employees, 15 million
men are unemployed, that is an issue, and we may
not hope to find its solution within the range of
opportunities open to any one individual. The very
structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both the
correct statement of the problem and the range of
possible solutions require us to consider the eco-
nomic and political institutions of the society, and
not merely the personal situation and character of
a scatter of individuals.
Consider war. The personal problem of war,
when it occurs, may be how to survive it or how to
die in it with honor; how to make money out of it;
how to climb into the higher safety of the military
apparatus; or how to contribute to the war’s termi-
nation. In short, according to one’s values, to find

a set of milieux and within it to survive the war or
make one’s death in it meaningful. But the struc-
tural issues of war have to do with its causes; with
what types of men it throws up into command;
with its effects upon economic and political, fam-
ily and religious institutions; with the unorganized
irresponsibility of a world of nation-states.
Consider marriage. Inside a marriage a man
and a woman may experience personal troubles,
but when the divorce rate during the first four
years of marriage is 250 out of every 1,000 at-
tempts, this is an indication of a structural issue
having to do with the institutions of marriage
and the family and other institutions that bear
upon them.
Or consider the metropolis—the horrible, beau-
tiful, ugly, magnificent sprawl of the great city. For
many upper-class people, the personal solution to
“the problem of the city” is to have an apartment
with private garage under it in the heart of the city
and, forty miles out, a house by Henry Hill, garden
by Garrett Eckbo, on a hundred acres of private
land. In these two controlled environments—with
a small staff at each end and a private helicopter
connection—most people could solve many of the
problems of personal milieux caused by the facts
of the city. But all this, however splendid, does not
solve the public issues that the structural fact of the
city poses. What should be done with this wonder-
ful monstrosity? Break it up into scattered units,
combining residence and work? Refurbish it as it
stands? Or, after evacuation, dynamite it and build
new cities according to new plans in new places?
What should those plans be? And who is to decide
and to accomplish whatever choice is made? These
are structural issues; to confront them and to solve
them requires us to consider political and eco-
nomic issues that affect innumerable milieux.
Insofar as an economy is so arranged that
slumps occur, the problem of unemployment
Reading 1 The Sociological Imagination 5
becomes incapable of personal solution. Insofar
as war is inherent in the nation-state system and
in the uneven industrialization of the world, the
ordinary individual in his restricted milieu will
be powerless—with or without psychiatric aid—
to solve the troubles this system or lack of system
imposes upon him. Insofar as the family as an in-
stitution turns women into darling little slaves
and men into their chief providers and unweaned
dependents, the problem of a satisfactory mar-
riage remains incapable of purely private solu-
tion. Insofar as the overdeveloped megalopolis
and the overdeveloped automobile are built-in
features of the overdeveloped society, the issues
of urban living will not be solved by personal in-
genuity and private wealth.
What we experience in various and specific
milieux, I have noted, is often caused by structural
changes. Accordingly, to understand the changes
of many personal milieux we are required to look
beyond them. And the number and variety of such
structural changes increase as the institutions
within which we live become more embracing
and more intricately connected with one another.
To be aware of the idea of social structure and to
use it with sensibility is to be capable of tracing
such linkages among a great variety of milieux.
To be able to do that is to possess the sociological
imagination.
CRITICAL-THINKING QUESTIONS
1. Why do people in the United States tend to
think of the operation of society in personal
terms?
2. What are the practical benefits of the socio-
logical perspective? Are there liabilities?
3. What does Mills have in mind in suggesting
that by developing the sociological imagination
we learn to assemble facts into social analysis?